Show-me webcam: An open source, trustable, and high quality webcam

This firmware transforms your Raspberry Pi 0 W to a high quality webcam for all your Zooming needs.

Project page on Hackaday

• Demo video

• Sample camera picture - Warning: OLD

What you need

• Raspberry Pi 0 W (I have not tested with the Pi 0 non-Wireless)
• Pi 0 W Camera Ribbon (comes with the Pi 0 camera case or you can buy somewhere else, the stock one that comes with the camera may not fit).
• Raspberry Pi Camera or Raspberry Pi High-Quality Camera
• Micro SD card

What works and what doesn't

• The camera is known to work on Linux, Windows 10 and macOS Mojave.
• You can use the normal camera of the Pi, it will work too, of course it won't look too good.

Directions

• Assemble the camera to the Pi.
• Download the binary release (down below).
• Download and use Etcher to write the image to the SD card.
• Use the USB data port (the one in the middle of the Pi, not the one on the edge) to connect to a computer.
• Enjoy!

Binary releases

Occasionally I release binary snapshots at the release tab: https://github.com/showmewebcam/showmewebcam/releases

Debugging

For debugging, a 115200 baud serial interface is provided as a ttyACM device:

• Please use screen or minicom to connect to it.
• Use username: root, password root.

Also, there is a untested serial interface on the serial 40-pin header: https://pinout.xyz/pinout/uart

If you want to modify the image content the quick-and-dirty way (not recommended):

• Start with the chroot-to-pi script: https://gist.github.com/htruong/7df502fb60268eeee5bca21ef3e436eb
• Edit /bin/bash to /bin/sh on the chroot /mnt/raspbian /bin/bash line.

Customizing camera settings

Override camera settings temporarily:

Log in to the debug interface. Then list all tweakable parameters:

/usr/bin/v4l2-ctl -L | less

Then you can directly apply parameters on the fly:

/usr/bin/v4l2-ctl -c auto_exposure_bias=15
/usr/bin/v4l2-ctl -c contrast=0

Override camera settings permanently:

Mount the SD card on your computer, and create a file called camera.txt in /boot and put all parameters you want overridden, e.g:

#Tweak the auto exposure bias
auto_exposure_bias=15
#Tweak the contrast
contrast=0

You can edit camera.txt on-target by remounting /boot read-write:

mount -o remount,rw /boot

Building

Make a directory in your home: develop.

• In develop, untar the buildroot-2020.2.3 tar package and rename buildroot-2020.02.3 to buildroot.
• Get out back to develop.
• In develop, git clone this repo https://github.com/showmewebcam/showmewebcam to it.
• Run ./build-showmewebcam.sh.
• The resulting image will be at the buildroot/output/image folder.

Credits

• David Hunt: http://www.davidhunt.ie/raspberry-pi-zero-with-pi-camera-as-usb-webcam/
• Buildroot
• ARM fever: https://armphibian.wordpress.com/2019/10/01/how-to-build-raspberry-pi-zero-w-buildroot-image/
• The reposity icon is attributed to the GNOME project